AFC West coaching schemes for the 2021 season

Let us check and analysis AFC West coaching schemes for the 2021 season . One important method to get an advantage over your fantasy rivals is understanding how a determined player will feature in a specific offense. By understanding a coaching scheme, you can get a better grasp of how value works during a fantasy draft and it will help you make the best possible decision. This is the kind of information that will make the difference between you and your opponents in your fantasy league.

Knowing tendencies and formations from a specific offense may look like a boring exercise, but if you have an idea of what and how a player will produce, then you can better judge if he’s worth drafting or not. Having those pieces of information will also help you make better decisions regarding waiving a player or signing a free agent during the season, as a fantasy league is not won during its draft.

Now that you’re convinced that understanding offenses will help you win more games during the year, let’s check the offensive schemes from the AFC West teams for the 2021 season:

Denver Broncos: Lots of play-action and 11 personnel, West Coast principles

When Pat Shurmur was hired as the offensive coordinator, he kept going through a cycle where he has good stints as OC but then fails as the head coach. But now in Denver, his task is tougher than what he had in other years.

That is because there’s no real starter quarterback for the Broncos. Yes, Drew Lock and Teddy Bridgewater are fighting for the spot, but it’s not like we’re talking about a battle between two above-average players. The best way to an offense to function with them is to hide them as much as possible.

With 88% of the offensive plays last year mixed by 11 personnel (66%) and 12 personnel (22%), you should be careful if you’re going to trust in any player in Denver’s offense, especially if the quarterback can’t produce consistently, whoever that is. The West Coast principles that Shurmur used with the Minnesota Vikings in 2017, plus the high usage of play-action, will do a fine job hiding the deficiencies of Lock and Bridgewater as a whole. But a scheme can only do so much.

Kansas City Chiefs: 3v1 looks with Kelce Y-Iso and Trips

It’s not that difficult to understand what Andy Reid and Eric Bieniemy usually prepare for the Chiefs offense, with a trio of receivers aligned to one side of the field and Travis Kelce alone in the other. The hard part is having the adequate personnel to defend it.

Usually, what Kansas City likes to do is use 11 personnel to call up their most known play, Trips Y-Iso, and a ton of variations that they use out of it with lots of motions and gadget plays. The Chiefs have incredibly fast weapons in Tyreek Hill, the highest ADP for the ’21 season as a WR, and Mecole Hardman, so what Reid and Bieniemy focus on what to do is put the ball in their hands designing situations for them to get the maximum amount of yards after the catch.

With Patrick Mahomes‘ ability to scramble and throw on the run, Kelce’s knack for finding the soft spot over the zones of defense, and Hill and Hardman combining their speed to stress opposing defenses, they’re all great options in case you want to draft one of them to your fantasy team. Oh, and don’t forget Clyde Edwards-Helaire’s ability to catch passes out of the backfield.

Las Vegas Raiders: West Coast Offense, but mixed with deep shots

Sometimes, Jon Gruden seems to be a head coach who’s going to do things old school and hope to win in his antiquated way. But he seems to understand that it’s impossible to win in the NFL nowadays with the same offenses he used at the beginning of the century.

That’s why we see a scheme mix of the West Coast Offense with Derek Carr finding easy completions over the middle of the field and deep shots dialed to use the speed of Henry Ruggs and Brian Edwards, plus opening space for Darren Waller.

It’s a more diverse offense now than it was when Gruden was hired in 2018, but it’s still conservative in its core: only the Cleveland Browns (22%) used more formations with only 1WR than the Las Vegas Raiders (20%) in 2020. Running backs are still a passion for Gruden, and you can expect an uptick in the use of 21 and 22 personnel following the signing of Kenyan Drake in free agency – he’s going to make a fantastic duo alongside Josh Jacobs.

Los Angeles Chargers: Lots of 21 personnel to diversify the running game

That was a weird hire by the Chargers following Justin Herbert’s amazing rookie season. Joe Lombardi projects as a fine offensive coordinator, but considering he was teached by Sean Payton in recent years, what we should expect is an offense with a diverse running game and intermediate routes to go along slants.

Why is that weird, them? Because, as it became clear last year, the best way to let Justin Herbert flourish is just to let him do Herbert things – in other words, let him find his receivers deep and watch the magic happen.

The Chargers used 11 personnel in 71% of their plays last year, one of the highest marks in the entire league. The Saints only used 11 personnel in 54% of their offensive plays, below the league average. Surely Lombardi has a good idea of how to run an offense after so many years learning from Sean Payton, but he can’t reinvent the wheel in his scheme. He only has to let Herbert find Keenan Allen and Mike Williams through the field, just like he did perfectly last year.

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